


Fire We Will

by Moonlark



Category: Baseball RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Temeraire Fusion, M/M, Minor Character Death, kind of
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-07-15
Updated: 2014-09-09
Packaged: 2018-02-08 01:38:09
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 3,108
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1921830
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Moonlark/pseuds/Moonlark
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Brandon doesn't want a dragon.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. A Brief History of Dragons in the Americas

The dragon is a creature of elegance and beauty. Long revered by humans as a symbol of power and wisdom, they are the only other living creature known to be sentient. This, combined with the effects of evolution and natural selection, has led to a millenia-long partnership between humans and dragons, a mutually agreed-upon symbiotic relationship. It provided dragons with the dexterity and gentleness that human fingers provided, as well as the inventiveness of _Homo_ _sapiens_ , while in turn giving the humans protection from predators, flight, and an easy source of fire.

During the second Ice Age, when animals started moving across the Bering Land Bridge, it was not long before dragons followed. Dragons are not naturally migratory (with the notable exception of the Norwegian Snøhjert ( _Draco ningues_ _adducet_ ), but the slow movement of prey eventually led to a small exodus into the Americas. Once across the Pacific, the dragons became cut off from the Eastern continents, and began to evolve on their own. 

There are two species of great New World dragons. There are also many other New World dragons, but for the purpose of this article we will focus on the great dragons. As of the sixteenth century, the Northern Blackfire ( _Draco americanus borealis_ ) was widespread across most of North America (except for the southeastern coastal swamps, which were ruled by _Crocodylus paludae maximus_ ) and parts of the Andes in South America. The Southern Blackfire ( _Draco americanus australis_ ) occupied South America and Central America, finding the uppermost point of its range in the southwestern US, from what would become Texas to the lower half of California. 

Due to the separation from the Eastern, African, and European dragons, the two Blackfire species developed distinctly different characteristics. Rather than being named and learning through the shell, like the Old World dragons, they would choose a name in shell, and were born with a dialect—Molohia, commonly known as drake-tongue—that bears few similarities to Durzagh, as spoken by those ferals in the Middle East. Their dark grey ruff and body shape belied some Celestial ancestry at one point, and they also evolved to have dextrous forepaws-one claw on which was opposable and acted like a thumb. The main color was black, although claws and horns were dark silver, and there were gold or silver stripes on the face and gold or silver speckles on the edged of the wings.

When European explorers first came to the Americas, they were accompanied by various Old World dragons. In much the same way the human explorers brought diseases to the Americas that the indigenous people had no immunity to, the Old World dragons brought strains of dragon pox with them. The New World dragon population was decimated by the disease, and many others were killed by colonists, both human and dragon. By the early nineteenth century, both Blackfire species were in full decline. They had disappeared from much of their natural habitats, retreating to the most remote locations—the Rockies and the Yukon for the Northern Blackfire, and the Andes and the depths of the Amazon for the Southern Blackfire.

Even in early times, there were many humans who were opposed to the existence and acceptance of dragons as a part of their world and culture. There were fewer means to stop them in the Americas, and so these "dragon hunters" were able to slaughter numerous dragons. The populations plummeted further, and the lower ranking predators, the wolves and bears and mountain lions and coyotes, became nuisances without the Blackfires and the other species to keep them in check. 

In the mid-twentieth century, the government finally recognized the problems that the rapid disappearance of the American dragons was causing and placed both the Northern and Southern Blackfires on the endangered species list. It became a felony to kill or disturb a dragon in the wild, and all New World bonded pairs were required to register with the Department of Human-Dragon Relations. It later became standard practice for both Old World and New World dragons in pairs to register with the DHDR. These steps, along with other measures taken, helped to stabilize what was left of the Northern Blackfire population, but it was to late for their southern cousins. 

On April 13, 1983, the last known Southern Blackfire, Andrew, died outside of Mexico City, Mexico. There are rumors of a pocket of them holding on in the Andes, but no proof has been found. The Southern Blackfire is the first of the modern dragon species to go extinct. 

The Northern Blackfire is still critically endangered.


	2. The Hatching of Dragonets

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tim is a half dragon. This means when he's trying to seem human, he has scalene eyes, eyebrow ridges, pointed ears, and sharp teeth, but he can also have wings, horns, claws, a tail, and scales covering 95% of his body when he wants.

It's a hotel room in the middle of a city, a broken air conditioner that pours heat through the vents. It's a dark tunnel, rectangular, part of a ventilation system that some stubborn bastard refuses to fix. It's an incubator, a warm-walled cage fronted by a grill and backed by a fan.

Hunter's starting to get scared. By now, the exhaustion's a given, but he feels vaguely like he should be able to control the fear.

He gives another tug on his left wing, the one that's pinned to the floor of the vent by a too-big fragment of shell. It doesn't move, and his hind paws slip sideways in the leftover fluid. He's still got strands of it drying across his scales, and the protests of hunger have grown loud enough that he can no longer ignore them.

He tries to free himself one more time, and then gives up and starts mewling pitifully. Even that eventually tapers off, though, as the heat and the post-hatching exhaustion get the better of him. He tries and fails to arrange himself comfortably and lets the world recede from view.

At some point, the vent cover comes off. This doesn't rouse him, but the feeling of hands around his midsection does. He struggles, squirming and lashing his tail, hissing like a rattlesnake, but the grip is like iron (or maybe it's the fact that he's small enough to curl up and fit in the palm of one of those hands).

Then something else passes in front of his muzzle and he instinctively bites down, and that's how Brandon Belt ends up with a tiny dragon dangling from his thumb at 3:30 in the morning.

*******

By the look of things, Tim does not appreciate the rapid-fire knocking on his door. His (triangular) eyes are mildly bloodshot and the room smells of fireweed, though, so it's not like he can complain to anyone. Fireweed is both illegal and lethal to humans, but Tim's got just enough dragon in him that he can get blindingly stoned without dying.

"Wha—" he begins, and then cuts himself off as he sees the scaly ball in Brandon's hands. "Where did you find that?!" 

"A vent."

Tim blinks, and then blinks again, muttering something under his breath in drake-tongue. Then he sighs. "Feed them. Raw meat—half a pound. Oh, and you might hear them talking to you in your head, but don't freak out."

"Where am I supposed to get raw meat at this hour?" Brandon asks blankly.

Tim snorts. "Room service?" 

Brandon leaves.

*******

Room service does not, in fact, carry raw meat, but the 24 hour supermarket a block away does. The dragonet gobbles up the hamburger, burps, and curls up. It sets its head sleepily on its tail and watches through half-closed eyes as Brandon tries to lie down and go back to sleep. 

He can't, not with the fact that there's a dragonet curled up on the desk. That's something he can't just forget—he's the temporary guardian of a baby dragon. Fuck, he's never even wanted a dragon—it's Morse who's dragon crazy. Hey, maybe he can hand the creature off to Morse—but he's not going to get out of this bed again tonight. 

He throws an arm across his face, fully aware that he has no idea what he's doing.

"I don't even have a name for you, little guy,"  he whispers into the blackness. A second later, one word flares across the darkness.

_"Hunter."_


	3. The Watcher Watching

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello, unnamed urbexer.
> 
> Urbex stands for urban exploration. It's where people go and find empty, abandoned, forgotten, or rarely used places to photograph and visit without disturbing them. It's a hobby for some people and more serious for others. I've only gone exploring a few times, but it's something I'm thinking about doing more of, once I've finished school and gotten a real job and paid off the loans and all that stuff.

The belfry is silent, crumbling, bells long removed. It's abandoned, too remote for a congregation to gather, written off as a loss. For years, the old church had stood empty, the mortar disintegrating and the windows cracked and clouded. Slates had periodically detached themselves from the roof and slid down the slopes to shatter on the weathered flagstones below. The garden is tangled and overgrown, vines and briars that sport dark red roses growing wild, kudzu creeping over the windowsills and carpeting the floor in an ankle-high shag rug. In the inner sanctum, dirt and leaves have swept themselves into corners and cracks, and a half-melted candle lies sideways on top of them while rainwater drips slowly into a tarnished chalice.

The woman stands outside the far gate, peering through the forgotten graveyard at the building before her. Her heart is beating a thousand miles an hour, but she manages to make herself as physically calm as she could, holding the camera steady as she snaps a quick picture.

The church really is quite beautiful, its dilapidated state only adding to the mystery of it. It's a marvelous find, really, undisturbed after all this time. Any urbexer worth shit would be jealous.

Grinning broadly, she pushes open the gate, taking care not to break the ancient, rusted hinges. Her footsteps are light and careful as she wades through the kudzu and the briars, not caring about the tiny tears in her sweats. She stops to take another picture of the church, and then sets a hand against the old, half-rotted door.

It opens surprisingly easily, swinging inward with nary a groan or protest, and she pauses for a brief second, pondering whether it is weird for the neglected door to open so smoothly, before shrugging and stepping over the threshold.

Instantly she stops, because the view she's getting was incredible, so moving in a special way that she almost cries. She raises the camera again, hands shaking for a different reason, and begins her interior exploration. 

An hour and a half later, she's clambering through another kudzu barricade that is spilling through a (formerly stained-glass) window on the partially eroded stairway to the belfry. Each footstep must be planned, and it seems to take forever, but the challenge is part of what makes it great, finding places like this. 

When she finally emerges from the kudzu roadblock, she's nearly at the top of the stairs, and then she's on the small platform where it used to be one would stand to ring the bells, and there's a window and the sun is setting—

Oh. _YEAH_.

She is totally coming here again. 

It's another half hour before she moves from the spot, turning around to capture the inside of the belfry, devoid of bells as it is. She takes a few more photos, being careful not to disturb anything—and that's when she notices it. 

There's a block of stone on the wall by her legs that's cleaner than the others. 

She frowns, debating the merit of investigating internally, but then she remembers how easily the door downstairs had opened, and curiosity wins out over her conscience. It's easy to pull the block out from the others; too easy—someone had chipped the mortar away. It's heavy, but she's relatively fit, and she doesn't drop it on her toes. After setting it down, she kneels and peers into the hole.

What she sees is a backpack. 

Oh well. She's gone this far; might as well finish it out. She fishes the pack out from the hole and begins to look through it. At first, it just seems to be a bag of survival supplies: first aid kit, emergency blanket, water purification system, dried food, compass, matches. She starts to relax, still thinking it's weird, but not feeling threatened anymore. 

Then she finds the gun. And that sets everything on edge again, because, hello, it's a fucking _handgun_. Left by some random person, she doesn't know who, or when they'll be back, or what, or... or anything. But there's still something else in the bag, and this time it's caution that curiosity wins out over, because she sets the gun aside and pulls out a folder.

It's one of those big, brown portfolio things that has the xylophone sides and is held closed with some string. She opens it slowly, taking time to allow her brain to attempt to persuade her not to. It doesn't work, of course, and then she's pulling out a marble notebook. 

It's full of notes.

What a surprise. A notebook with notes in it. Then she begins to read, and after only a page her stomach is churning with horror and there's panic in her heart. The notes aren't for a project, or school or anything—they're not even fiction. They're documentation of habit, of a person's life, of routines to consider, opportunities to watch—the notes of a stalker.

The rest of the file is filled with candid photos taken in every angle, every lighting, every setting, but there's one constant—a dark-haired man, slim, with triangular eyes and pointed ears and a weird-but-cute smile—and she's not a baseball fan, but she's not _dumb._ Even she can put a name to that face, can place the logo that appears in every picture snapped at a ballpark, can figure out that this is someone in danger and she's got to tell, got to warn someone, got to do something—

By the time she realizes there's someone standing behind her, it's too late. A hand clamps over her mouth, and an iron-muscled arm clamps across her chest. There's a feeling of being lifted, weightless, rising like an angel, and then the windowsill passes underneath her and she's falling, down, down, a million downward miles to fall, and land upon the green-covered stone below—

(Her last thoughts as the ground whistles toward her are that it's a pity she didn't get a good look at the shadow's face, but that at least she gets to rest in this beautiful place. She wonders if anyone will ever find the body.)

—broken, a lifeless wreck, but no more a ruin than the old church that stood there. 

*******

The spirits in the graveyard welcome in the new soul with gusto. The stranger is the first new face they've seen in almost a century, and it's been so long. It's good to see someone else again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> RIP, unnamed urbexer.
> 
> I apologize if I managed to offend any urbexers out there with this bit.


	4. In Dawn's Soft Eyes

Hunter wakes up long before Brandon the next morning. There's barely even a gloomy gray dawn pre glow on the horizon when he squirms his way under the heavy curtains. The window's actually a sliding door, leading to a balcony that overlooks a heated courtyard. The hotel curls in an O around it.

It doesn't take Hunter long to figure out the latch, but the heavy sliding door is another matter. He finally manages to drag it open far enough to squeeze through, and soon finds himself outside...

Staring down at the sleeping figure of a huge dragon.

About a minute goes by before Hunter realizes he's not breathing. He swears he's quiet as he sucks in some oxygen, he swears he doesn't make a noise at all, but an enormous eye cracks open and fixes him with a smudgy stare. 

Hunter squeaks a little, and then slaps his tail across his muzzle, because letting out useless noise is not a good idea when you're trying not to be noticed. The eye, the warm brown eye with small gold flecks buries in the iris, blinks and then rises into the air as the dragon raises its head to peer curiously at Hunter.

"Hello there, who are you?" it asks. 

"Uhhh, Hunter?" Hunter forces out, because when you're confronted with a creature easily ten times your size, it's best to answer when you're spoken to.

"Oh, great! I'm Angel." Angel's silvery wings flick open and closed against the blue-grey scales, and the red-gold circles and stripes on his head seem to shimmer as the sun finally makes it above the rooftops. "Where'd you come from?"

"Uh... I hatched?"

"Of course you hatched, silly. All dragons hatch." Hunter can't help but bristle slightly—it feels like he's being made fun of. But then Angel's head moves closer and eventually rests on the balcony railing, and Hunter forgets all about his indignation, because seriously, this guy is HUGE.

"But where did you come from?" Angel asks again, blinking. 

Hunter is forced to admit that he doesn't know. "I guess I come from here," he says, explaining what he remembers of the heating vent. "Where is here?"

Angel rumbles; it's a deep, low-chested laugh. "This is California, Los Angeles in fact, but that won't make sense to you when you're just out of the shell—we'll need a proper map."

"...what's a map?" Hunter asks.

Angel looks somewhat taken aback. "It's this thing, this drawing of the world or land or—or places, and it shows you where things are."

"Oh, I could see where to find some food?"

Angel rumbles again, and the whole balcony moves slightly. "Humans aren't smart enough not to freak out if one of us were to walk into a supermarket, even one as small as you—I couldn't fit."

"...what's a supermarket?"

The sound of a large dragon sighing is akin to that of a huge bellows being pumped out. 

*******

Brandon wakes with the shrill siren of his alarm in his ear. For a few moments after he shuts it off, he lies there in blissful silence, and then the events of last night come rushing back, and he finds himself glancing reflexively at the pillow on the dresser-top where he'd left Hunter.

The pillow is empty.

He can't exactly help going into panic mode, but at least he could've done it more gracefully, he admits to himself a minute later as he sits on the floor next to the bed, tangled in a sheet and rubbing a banged shin. No wonder he's widely known as awkward.

It's hard to summon logic, not this soon after waking up. Still, the draft from the open door as a pretty big clue, so he manages to untangle himself and pull the curtain aside.

Hunter's tiny black scale-covered form, tail sweeping to and fro and front paws moving energetically, is comically small next to the gray-blue car-sized head with red-gold speckles that is Blanco's 4-month old Caribbean Silverwing—Regal Copper cross, Angel.

 Brandon hopes that his muffled laughter, if at all audible to the dragons, isn't offensive in the least.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah, made some changes overall because there were some holes with my earlier idea, but now it's working.

**Author's Note:**

> Work in progress. Comments/praise/concrit accepted, welcomed, encouraged.


End file.
